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Burning of 18 Persons in Salzburg, 1528 in The Martyrs Mirror by Jan Luiken

Why the forgotten saints of the past can sharpen our mission vision for today

by Aaron Myers

In 1527, a group of Anabaptist leaders gathered for what would become known as the Martyrs Synod, a meeting of men and women so committed to the Great Commission that many of them would not live to see the next few years. I read about it last week, and I was stunned that I had never heard the story. That discovery is the seed of this new feature, “Cloud of Witnesses,” in which I hope to highlight the lesser-known stories of faith and mission in the history of the church.


There are two ditches we moderns can fall into. The first is discouragement. We look at our own culture, the one we long to see transformed by the gospel, and feel that it has never been this bad, this hopeless. The second is what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery: the quiet assumption that our generation has finally figured out theology and mission, and that those before us had little to teach.


Looking back corrects both. We find that our ideas are rarely new and our challenges are rarely unique. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, brothers and sisters who, in their own time and place, threw themselves into the harvest among those far from God. They may be unknown to us, but they were never unknown to the One who sent them. Historian John Lewis Gaddis says that studying the past doesn’t predict the future, but it prepares us for it “by expanding experience, so that you can increase your skills, your stamina—and, if all goes well—your wisdom.”


That is my aim here: to help us grow in skill, stamina, and wisdom for the work ahead. In the coming months, I’ll write about the Martyrs Synod and the men and women who went out from it to carry the gospel forth. I’ll also tell the stories of Rose Lambert, Lillias Trotter, George Lele, Samson Occom and many more. I plan to write four to six of these articles each year, each highlighting one lesser-known missionary and the lessons we can learn from their life.


Do you have a missionary whose story deserves to be told? I’d love to hear who you would add to the list.

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The Importunate Neighbour (1895)— William Holman Hunt

What would change if we prayed for the unreached the way Jesus taught us to ask?

by Aaron Myers

I have been reading through the book of Luke with my high school Sunday school class these past few weeks. The focus of the class is on learning to read and apply the word of God to our lives and ultimately, to help them develop the daily habit of reading the Bible. We’ve been working through a plan which, by reading five chapters a week, will take us through the entirety of the New Testament in a year. In my last article I wrote about the Father’s heart for the nations and my journey with these students has only served to strengthen this idea.


While I am the teacher and working to help my students learn to read their Bibles, as usually happens when I read the living and active word of God, I’ve been challenged as well. God is challenging me to continue to deepen my prayer life. Last week it was Luke six and Jesus’ ‘night of prayer’. There is something about the Son of God finding it necessary to spend an entire night ‘praying to God’ (vs. 12) that caused a question to bubble up in my mind: if the Creator of the universe chose to spend an entire night in prayer, might it be reasonable to consider that I might need to spend a few hours in prayer on a more regular basis? That I don’t more naturally default to prayer in my everyday life belies some deeper reality about where I place my faith. Lord help me!


This week it was Luke 11. In this passage, Jesus has been asked by his disciples to teach them to pray. It seems he has modeled a life of prayer and now, in their own aha moment, they’ve decided to ask for deeper instruction. They too want to learn to live lives that default to prayer. In verses 2-4 Jesus gives them the outline for a basic structure of prayer we know as the ‘Lord’s Prayer.’ In Luke we find a pared down version of the prayer we find also in Jesus’ sermon on the mount in Matthew 6. In Luke 11 however, Jesus goes on to share a deeper teaching on prayer with his disciples using first a story, then an exhortation and then ending with an example. Jesus wants them to get it. He wants them to understand deep-down the heart attitude they should carry into prayer.


This brings us to ‘shameless audacity’. Luke 11:5-8 is a story of a man who has a friend suddenly show up at his door. He has no food to offer the customary hospitality required by his culture and so he heads out to another, nearby friend, to ask for three loaves of bread. It’s late. The friend has already put his children to bed and locked down the house for the night. He doesn’t want to get out of bed to help and says as much. In verse 8 Jesus says, “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.” That is the NIV but it is translated similarly in the NASB (shamelessness), the ESV (impudence), the CSB (shameless boldness) and the NLT (persistence and boldness). Eugene Peterson spells it out a bit more in The Message—’if you stand your ground, knocking and waking all the neighbors’.


This story is followed by Jesus’ exhortation to ask . . . seek . . . knock. . . “Everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (vs. 10). Jesus draws the teaching to a close with the example of an earthly father giving good gifts to his kids compared to our Heavenly Father. Jesus seems focused on teaching his disciples, and us, to pray with confidence, to pray with urgency, and to pray with shameless audacity.


And this of course challenged me—do I pray like that? 


The Bible is filled to the brim with examples of people who prayed with the kind of shameless audacity Jesus is pointing to in Luke 11. Here are just a few:

  • Abraham bargaining over Sodom (Genesis 18:22-33). Abraham stands before God and negotiates down from fifty righteous people to ten, saying things like "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" He essentially holds God to His own character, and he keeps pushing six times.
  • Moses talking God out of destroying Israel (Exodus 32:9-14; Numbers 14). After the golden calf, Moses argues with God about His own reputation among the Egyptians and reminds Him of His promises to the patriarchs. The text says God "relented." Moses even says, "blot me out of your book" if God won't forgive the people (Exodus 32:32).
  • Hannah's desperate prayer (1 Samuel 1). She prays so intensely, lips moving with no sound, that Eli the priest assumes she's drunk. She makes a bargain with God for a son and doesn't apologize for the intensity.
  • Jesus' parables on persistence. Besides the teaching above, Jesus also shares about the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) who badgers an unjust judge until she gets justice, and Jesus holds her up as a model of prayer.
  • The Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28). Jesus tests her with what sounds like a harsh refusal, and she turns his own metaphor back on him: even the dogs eat the crumbs under the table. She is audacious and He commends her faith and grants her request.
  • Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). The crowd tells him to be quiet, and he just keeps shouting louder and louder. Jesus stops for him and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”


If Jesus tells us to ask, seek and knock and to do so with shameless audacity, and with so many examples in the Scriptures of the people of God doing just that, why do my prayers often seem so feeble? It may be that in personal requests we lack the confidence to ask audaciously for our own needs and desires. But we know God’s will is for the nations to worship Him, to see disciples made and churches established among every nation, tribe, people and language.


The man in Luke 11 wasn’t hungry. He was pounding on a neighbor’s door at midnight for the sake of a guest. That is the posture I want when I pray for the nations: not asking for my own comfort, but refusing to stay quiet while others go unfed or remain unreached.


And we aren’t twisting God’s arm. We’re asking for what he has already said he wants.


So this week, pick one unreached people group and pray for them by name each day. Ask for workers. Ask for churches. Ask until it feels almost embarrassing, and then keep asking.

Father, you promised that people from every nation, tribe and tongue would worship before your throne. We believe you. So we ask, boldly and without apology: send out workers, open hearts, and plant churches among the unreached. Do not let another generation pass without hearing your name. Amen.

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​From Genesis to Revelation, God's heart has always been set on the nations.
by Aaron Myers
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The Veteran in a New Field by Winslow Homer (1865)
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
                                                               Matthew 28:18-20
This is the passage of scripture that we know today as the great commission.  Echos of it are found in all four gospels and the book of Acts. The basic idea that the church has been commissioned to proclaim the gospel and make disciples of all nations is central to the message of Jesus. It reflects the heart of the Father and it’s why we’re still here.

There are a whole host of wonderful and good things that we are called to do as followers of Jesus, but making disciples is the one thing that we can only do now. Once we get to heaven we will still worship – only our worship will be better. We will still pray – only our prayers will be purer. We will still fellowship – only our fellowship will be free from the bonds of sin and shame. Making disciples is a special assignment for this life.  It will not continue in heaven. And it is the way that Jesus intends to see his Kingdom come. Through his church. Through people like you and me, broken vessels in the hands of an all powerful God.

But we need to understand that the Great Commission is not a beginning point, but rather a continuation of what has always been the heart of God, the mission of God, the grand narrative of the Bible. In the Abrahamic covenant as found in Genesis 12, God promises to bless Abraham and that through Abraham “all the families of the earth will be blessed.” And of course we understand this to be looking forward to the coming of Christ, the only one in whom salvation is found.

​The book of Jonah tells of God’s relentless pursuit of the lost in Nineveh. David reflects God’s heart for all nations when in Psalm 67 he says, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us—so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations” (v. 1-2). Isaiah continues the theme in chapter 49:6 saying of the promised Messiah, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”  Malachi 1:11 says, “My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord Almighty. “

Even before giving the Great Commission, Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 24:14 that "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." This isn't necessarily an end-times trigger. It's a window into what God intends: that every nation would hear. And John's vision in Revelation 7:9 shows where it leads: “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.”

God’s heart across time and from the very beginning has been to bring all nations into his family, to reconcile all people to himself, to set all free, to redeem all who are lost, to break the bonds of sin and shame. His heart is that all nations would worship him. That is the will of God. As you immerse yourself in the Bible you cannot miss the missional heartbeat of God. And that is why the great commission is so important to Him.

Jesus taught us to pray for the Father’s “kingdom to come and will to be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Knowing that the Father’s heart is set on the nations, how can we do anything less than work to discover our role in seeing his will done, in seeing disciples made and churches established among every nation, tribe, people and language?

How will you respond? What steps can you take to discover your role in the completion of the Great Commission? Can you pray? Give? Send? Welcome? Can you go?

Action Step:  Find thirty minutes to work through the Father’s Heart Study. For best results, pray about a few friends whom you could invite to go through the study with you over a cup of coffee. Spend time praying through the reflection questions.
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Seven ways churches can make a difficult financial decision with grace and generosity.
​By Aaron Myers
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Much of what I write here is about helping churches develop a healthy missions culture—and an important part of that culture is developing a generous and sustainable giving culture. We want churches to give generously, give strategically, and develop long-term partnerships with missionaries. But healthy missions partnerships also require us to think carefully about what happens when a church needs to change or end its financial support.
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Tom and Jane had been serving in Central Asia for over ten years when suddenly they ran into a major obstacle—they lost a major donor who had been giving $1,000 every month. This was a church that had supported them for a long time—a church they had attended as young adults and visited every furlough but a leadership change had led to a change in focus. With no warning, the monthly gift just disappeared. They didn’t realize it had happened until three months after the checks had stopped showing up and by that time they were headed toward a major deficit that was going to create major problems. They had worked hard to be good stewards, to live responsibly within their means with a focus on ministry and to communicate well with their ministry partnership team. While this story is fictional you can imagine that this kind of  financial hit might take anyone  into a tailspin.

Imagine working for years for a company and suddenly realizing that your income had been cut by $1,000 a month. A missionary who raises their own support doesn't simply receive a paycheck from an employer. Their “income” is built from dozens—or sometimes hundreds—of individual relationships.It’s a problem that doesn’t happen in most vocations but for the self-supporting missionary, this is a very real vulnerability.

Churches sometimes have legitimate reasons for ending financial support. The problem isn't necessarily that support ends; it's how that decision is communicated and carried out.

If a church has decided that it can no longer financially support a missionary however, it should do so, as far as it is in their capacity, with integrity, honor and in a way that gives the missionary the greatest opportunity to not end up in a financial crisis. And this applies as well to individuals who find they need to stop giving. With today’s article I want to offer a few practical guidelines for ending missionary support. 

Don't surprise them.
No missionary should “notice” that a gift is no longer coming into their account. If you anticipate that a change may be coming, be proactive in communicating to the missionary. You would not want to experience that kind of surprise and neither do they.

Talk before you make the change.
Don't let the missionary learn about the decision through a budget document, email, or another church member. Set up a time to call and have a conversation. Give them the opportunity to ask questions. If you’re ending the relationship because of perceived issues on their part, allow them a chance to share. Too often there is misunderstanding or misperception that can be cleared up with a face-to-face meeting.

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Explain the “why” honestly.
Whatever the reason for the change, communicate that openly and honestly with your missionary. Sometimes it involves changes in your church—a shrinking congregation or a crisis—that the missionary will want to pray for with you. Whatever the reason, tell it to them straight. Nobody likes to be strung along.

Consider a transition period.
There are many valid reasons for ending support for a missionary or mission organization. That said, regardless of the reason, it can be helpful to consider transitioning your giving away from the missionary rather than just cutting them off cold turkey.  If your church has been giving $1,000 a month, and circumstances allow, consider a transition period, walking that back incrementally over several months or even a year or two. This gives the missionary an opportunity to build the partnerships necessary to replace your giving. For example you could give $750 a month this year, $500 a month the next and $250 in the third year. This gives them an opportunity to build up the partnerships necessary to replace your giving.

Consider the size of the loss, not just the dollar amount.
All missionaries recognize that there will be attrition in their donor list. People lose jobs, go through major life changes or die. Every donor matters to a missionary. But not every gift carries the same financial weight. Losing a $25, $50 or $100 per month gift is a hit but losing a major donor, usually a church, who is providing a substantial percentage of monthly support can be catastrophic. The greater the size of the gift the more important it is to consider these recommendations.
 
Help them replace the support.
If appropriate, help make introductions to other churches, individuals, or ministry partners who might be interested in supporting their work.

Protect the missionary's relationships within the congregation.
If you are parting from financial partnership with a missionary be careful to not unnecessarily create confusion, suspicion, or gossip. Be aware that cutting support may unintentionally cause members of the congregation to assume the worst.

A Final Word
Financial partnerships may have seasons. Ending one doesn't have to erase the relationship or diminish the years of ministry you've shared. Healthy missions cultures are built not only on generous giving but also on healthy relationships and good stewardship. When a church communicates honestly, gives reasonable notice, and helps a missionary navigate the transition, it can end a financial partnership with integrity while honoring the person and ministry it once supported.

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An excellent starting point for anyone seeking a biblical theology of missions
By Aaron Myers
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I was 26 when I traveled to a missions conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was there that I first heard—or at least comprehended—the idea that the whole of the biblical story was a missions story, a reflection of the Father’s heart for the nations and one cohesive narrative of God’s plan for rescue. I’m not sure I realized it at the time, but before then I had viewed the Bible as more of a collection of random stories about God, and the Great Commission as a sort of new idea that Jesus brought onto the scene. But as the main speaker walked through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, highlighting the missional nature of God’s plan and the repeated refrain that all nations would one day worship God, I realized for the first time that the Bible was truly the story of the mission of God. It was there that I first understood that mission is not something the Bible merely speaks about. Mission is what the Bible is about. It is the context that provides the backbone for God’s story and our story. Since creation, God has been working to redeem all peoples to Himself.

Since that conference, I’ve read many books that focus on the missional story of God; John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad and Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God’s People, to name just two. These are fantastic works that helped build a deep biblical foundation for missions and books I’d encourage everyone to read. However, the book I would encourage everyone to read first is Justin Schell’s, The Mission of God and the Witness of the Church. I valued Schell’s book first and foremost because of its accessibility. At just eight chapters and 109 pages, it is a highly readable book offering keen insight into the Scriptures without getting bogged down in overly theological language. It is, however, far more than simply a CliffsNotes version of other mission books. The language, examples, and teaching are clearly presented and easy to read.

​For example, reflecting on the Great Commission, Schell writes:
​In the Great Commission, God continues with his original plan in Eden, a world filled with men and women who would reflect and represent the good God in all the earth—that is, disciples of all nations.
With clarity and clear examples, Schell walks through the Bible and gives a simple but solid overview of the whole Bible’s mandate for missions. Chapter one introduces the biblical God of mission, his character and his purpose in mission. Chapters two through eight then walk through the biblical story from Eden through the Fall to Abraham and the exodus before exploring Matthew 28 and the Great Commission. It then follows the early church as they work to obey Jesus before bringing the book to a close with a survey of the Epistles and the Book of Revelation.

As part of the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series of books printed by Crossway, The Mission of God and the Witness of the Church is the first book I’d recommend to a mission committee working to gain a better understanding of why we do missions. It would be a helpful book for any pastor feeling the need to have a better understanding of missions in the church and could also be a book for small groups to utilize for study and discussion. I have created a simple chapter reflection guide, which I trust will be beneficial for individuals and small groups as they work through this book. This worksheet, as well as, links to the book can be found below.
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The Mission of God and the Witness of the Church is a book I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to build a solid biblical foundation for understanding God's mission. I found it to be both deeply insightful and remarkably accessible—a combination that is not always easy to find. Whether you are new to missions or have spent years studying the subject, this book offers a clear, biblical framework for understanding God's heart for the nations. It is a resource I expect to return to often as I continue helping others discover their place in the mission of God.

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A practical and interactive resource to help churches use the World Cup to inspire prayer, learning, and gospel engagement among the nations.

By Aaron Myers

Last month I shared ways churches can use this summer’s World Cup to help their congregations learn, pray, and engage missionally. Today, I want to highlight a specific resource designed to help mission pastors and committees create fun, interactive ways for their churches to explore the 48 participating nations.
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My hope is that this resource will increase awareness, fuel prayer, and deepen your congregation’s understanding of God’s heart for the nations.

The World Cup Teams Prayer Guide is a free downloadable PDF. It includes a one-page overview for each of the 48 teams coming to Canada, the U.S., and Mexico this June.

Each team’s page includes:
  • Country name and flag
  • World map showing location
  • Key demographic information
  • Two fun facts
  • Three prayer points (via Prayercast)
  • QR code to the Prayercast video
  • QR code to the Joshua Project page
  • QR code to the FIFA team page

The guide also includes a handful of practical ideas for how to use these pages with your congregation. Think of these as starting points—you may find even more creative ways to engage your church. The goal is simple: create a fun, interactive connection to the nations that stirs prayer, generosity, and a willingness to go.

Download the guide today and begin planning how your church can engage the nations during the World Cup this June and July—through learning, prayer, and meaningful outreach.
We’d love to all learn from one another so please let us know how you are using the resource in the comments below.

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Why Great Commission leaders must learn to live faithfully between the church and the nations.
By Aaron Myers
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In his book Culture Care, Mako Fujimura develops the idea of the “mearcstapa”, an old English word that means “border stalker,” which he uses to describe a particular kind of Christian vocation—someone who lives attentively and creatively at the boundaries between worlds and cultures. With the idea of the border stalker, Fujimura captures a vision for Christian artists and thinkers who live and move between faith and culture, church and society and different traditions. As they occupy this space, border stalkers are able to listen to and learn from both sides, serving as cultural translators between groups that don’t normally talk to one another.

If you are familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings then you are familiar with Aragorn, the border stalking king who wanders in and out of the worlds of elves and dwarves and hobbits and man, inviting them to fight for the King and the kingdom rather than staying stubbornly at home.

The Apostle Paul was a border stalker who said, “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings” (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).

And of course Jesus was the ultimate border stalker. He is the one

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death--
        even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-8)

While Fujimura uses this idea mainly to cast vision for artists, I think we can also find application of the term helpful in thinking about the vocation of the mission pastor and mission mobilizer.
As I think about the great commission and the role of the mission pastor and mission mobilizer, the image of the border stalker resonates with the work that they do. Many have lived cross-culturally and have a deep desire to help the church in North America grow in her ability to see the nations among us through the eyes of Jesus and see with new urgency the nations of the world and the countless billions who remain unreached with the gospel.

Characteristics of an Effective Border Stalker
Fujimura describes the border stalker as someone who lives in the liminal spaces between worlds. But simply occupying those spaces does not make someone an effective guide. To faithfully serve as bridge-builders between the church and the nations, mission pastors and mobilizers need certain qualities. Without them, border stalkers will be ineffective at best—and antagonistic at worst.

Patience
Mission pastors, mobilizers, and missions champions have often been shaped by experiences that deeply formed their heart for the nations. We have seen the need. We feel the urgency. Many of us have been, as one mobilizer put it, “wrecked for the ordinary.”

But the people in our churches have not all had those same experiences. And even when they have, they may not respond as we did. That is why patience is essential.

A Turkish proverb says, damlaya damlaya göl olur—“Drop by drop, a lake is formed.” Building a missions culture requires steady, faithful, repeated investment over time. We must commit to small, consistent steps in the same direction, trusting that God will gradually deepen the vision and passion of a congregation.

Keep dripping the vision. Invest in those who respond.

Humility
Humility positions us to understand what God is already doing in a church and to join Him there. And humility begins with listening.

Rather than leading with our agenda, we should begin by hearing the stories of pastors, leaders, and church members. Ask thoughtful questions—not only about missions, but about their lives, ministries, burdens, and passions.

When we assume God is already at work in the people before us, we become better equipped to discern where their God-given passions intersect with the Great Commission. It is at that intersection that mobilization begins.

Hospitality
Hospitality means creating space for people to come as they are and meeting them there.

Yes, it includes hosting well. But more deeply, hospitality is an attitude of invitation—a willingness to meet people where they are, to create safe spaces for honest questions, and to patiently walk with them through their uncertainties.

Hospitality gives grace when others do not immediately share our urgency. It extends generosity to those still learning to see the nations through God’s eyes. Border stalkers must be hospitable people.

Beauty
Vision for the nations is often caught before it is taught.
One missions leader said, “The heart can rarely feel what the eyes have not seen.”

Scripture must remain foundational in helping people discover the Father’s heart for the nations. But beauty—through stories, testimony, art, poetry, and imagery—often awakens the imagination and stirs the affections in ways raw information cannot.

Stories of God’s work among the nations help people not merely understand the Great Commission, but feel its weight and wonder. A shared an example of this recently in my article Beauty and Beyond.

Beauty helps vision move from the mind to the heart.

A Final Word
As border stalkers, mission pastors are working to see their churches grow in their heart for the nations and the ability to partner with God in His kingdom expanding work. Mission mobilizers are focused on the church more broadly and their work, often for a particular mission agency, is focused on marshalling prayer, resources and people across the ocean and into service among people who do not yet know the hope of Christ.

Missions mobilizers and mission pastors—the church in North America needs you to guide them into the Father’s heart for the nations, into a growing desire to be a part of the great commission, and into the harvest among the unreached locally and globally.

Be border stalkers for the Lord. The church needs you.

Thank You.

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Four simple ways to engage the nations as the world gathers for the biggest event on earth.
By Aaron Myers
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This summer, the eyes of the world will be on North America as Canada, the U.S., and Mexico host the 23rd FIFA World Cup. Teams and fans from across the globe will travel to cities throughout the continent to take in the action.

While the Super Bowl draws over 100 million viewers each winter, the World Cup reaches nearly 5 billion people worldwide. Soccer (football) is the world’s game—played by more people, in more countries, than any other sport. And the World Cup is its greatest stage.

This summer, the nations are coming to us. This global moment is not accidental.  In Acts 17:26 the Apostle Paul says, “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find Him . . . “ 
As the world comes to North America in June, many will come from places where there is little if any gospel witness, places where Bibles or churches are hard to find and from countries where Christians are persecuted. It is a Kingdom opportunity and now is the time to begin to prepare to step into the good works which God is preparing for His church to do. We can do that in four simple ways.

Learn
The posture of a disciple of Jesus is the posture of a learner. The  World Cup creates unique opportunities for individuals, families and communities of faith to learn about His creation, the vast panorama of cultures and languages and faith backgrounds. Here are a few ideas:

Who is Playing? - Part 1
The  World Cup begins with group play where four teams play one another and the top two teams from each group move on to the knockout stage. You can see all of the groups and the countries in each group at the Wikipedia page for the 2026  World Cup. This is a great place to begin learning about the countries who have qualified and even where they’ll be staying. The Algerian national team will be staying in Lawrence Kansas, the Saudi Arabian national team will be in Austin, Texas. [Wikipedia: World Cup 2026]

​​Who is Playing? - Part 2
​Now that you know who the teams are and what nations they represent, visit the Joshua Project page for each country where you can learn what the status of Christianity is in each country. Below you can see a screenshot of Joshua Projects page on Algeria and the United States. This visual paints a picture of what missiologists mean when they use the word “Unreached.” In the U.S., 76.5% of people would identify as Christian, and 26.6% are part of an evangelical church. In Algeria, a nation of over 47 million people, only 0.1% would identify as Christian—and there is no measurable evangelical presence. In the United States, a person can encounter a Christian almost anywhere. In Algeria, those opportunities are nearly nonexistent. Joshua Project is an excellent resource to learn about the countries and the people who will be visiting this summer. [Explore at Joshua Project]
What is Soccer?
​It may be a funny question but let’s admit it—most reading this article did not grow up playing soccer and may not be all that interested in the sport. For the sake of the gospel however, I want to encourage you to learn. The unreached of the world love this sport. They love it passionately and so gaining a little knowledge is a simple act of kindness. Learning to care about the things others care about not only increases our ability to have conversations, it grows our compassion and empathy. It may be a bit of dying to self for some of us, but isn’t that what Christ calls us to do? [Learn from Bundesliga]
Pray
Once you’ve learned a bit about the nations coming to the  World Cup, I want to encourage you to begin praying for the teams and the fans that will accompany them. This is an important first step we can take to engage the nations among us. Here are a few ideas to help you foster prayer during the  World Cup.

Prayercast
Prayercast has created some amazing prayer videos for every country in the world. As the  World Cup approaches, begin prayerful watching and praying through the Prayercast videos for each of the countries coming to play. Watch the Algeria Prayercast video below. [Find a Nation at Prayercast]
World Map
Find a large world map and post it in your home where you can see it and then mark each of the countries who are coming to play in the  World Cup as a way to remember to pray.

Operation World
Operation World has resources for prayer for every country on earth including country summaries, powerpoint slides for group prayers and their Pray for the World book. [Visit Operation World]

Mobilize Others
The  World Cup creates a fun and engaging opportunity to mobilize your family, small group, or church into learning, praying and potentially going to the nations. The nations will be all over the news this summer and it will be good news. Here are a handful of ideas for mobilizing others.

The FIFA Bracket Challenge
Americans love their fantasy sports leagues and so inviting a group of friends from church to play FIFA’s bracket challenge creates some friendly competition and with it, an opportunity to get to know the teams and the nations they represent. Use this as a launching point for discussions and prayer about unreached people groups from the countries that are playing. [FIFA Bracket Challenge]

The Church FIFA Wall
Find a wall at church where you can hang a large world map. Put a pin in each country coming to play that attaches to a country information card or page. Have prayer cards and other information available for people to take home and commit to pray. Post all the groups and then the bracket for the knockout stage and keep it up to date as the tournament progresses. Group play begins June 11th and the tournament final is on July 19th so you’ll have over a month to highlight the nations.

Host A Watch Party: 
Invite a group from church or a small group to come together to watch a key match. If your church has missionaries serving in one of the countries that are represented, this could create a unique opportunity to learn more about the country. Bring resources to give to everyone and be sure to utilize halftime to watch the Prayercast video for that country. Cast vision for the spiritual needs and send everyone home with a prayer card.

Adopt a Team: 
Choose a team that is from a country where there are unreached peoples and challenge your congregation to pray. Be sure and create opportunities for learning, awareness and prayer. And of course, as mentioned before, host a watch party. Order small hand held flags from the country to give to everyone. 

Reach Out
With the  World Cup coming to North America, each team will bring with it their fan base. Many already live in the U.S., Canada or Mexico and many more will travel here to take in a game or just to be near the action. There are sixteen locations between the three countries [see map] and you don’t need to buy a ticket to the game to reach out. Fans will be in the host cities and around the stadiums for days during the group stage and they’ll be really easy to find. Just look for the Turkish or Algerian or Saudi flags and jerseys. Here are a few ideas for reaching out.

Sports Event Evangelism
SEE has been taking teams to sporting events for outreach and are preparing to do so again for the  World Cup. If you live near a host site or are willing to travel, check them out. [Learn More and Join a Team]

Host a Watch Party
CRU has created the Victory Beyond the Cup resource to help any individual or group host a watch party right in your community. If you have immigrants and refugees in your community they’ll be watching the  World Cup and this resource will give you the resources and materials to invite the nations into your home or church for a meaningful  World Cup event. [Get Your Host Kit Here]

Give a Gospel
The Pocket Testament League has  World Cup themed, pocket-sized Gospels of John. Order a pack of ten or 100 in English or in any number of languages that will be represented by  World Cup teams. [Pocket Testament League]

Connect Online
Did you know that hundreds of thousands of people from all of the countries that are coming to this global event are wanting to connect with native English speakers online for an opportunity to practice speaking English, to connect and to build new friendships?

Speak Truth Cafe provides unique opportunities for North American Christians to connect with students in a non-North American country, who wants to improve their English conversational skills and is willing to do so by reading the Bible during those English conversations. They would love to help you connect. [Get Started: Speak Truth Cafe]

If you’d be interested in forming an online outreach team within your local church community  to connect with people from Turkey specifically, I’d love to help you get started. Reach out to me through the About page.

Let The Games Begin
The World Cup is more than a sporting event, it is a moment of global gathering. The nations are coming to North America and I hope this article has sparked a few ideas for you and your church to partner with God this summer. 

Let’s learn from one another.
What ideas do you have in these four areas—Learn, Pray, Mobilize, Reach Out?

Share them in the comments section below so we can encourage and equip each other to engage the nations together.

​Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this post, ​share it with your friends.

Published on
​How globalization and digital culture may be reshaping the cultural distances in Ralph Winter’s classic framework for evangelism.
​By Aaron Myers
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It was several years ago that I first wrote about Ralph Winter’s E-Scale as a tool for understanding cross-cultural ministry.  As I’ve continued working in cross-cultural ministry over the past two decades—and observed the effects of globalization and rapid innovation in communication technology—I’ve begun to wonder whether it might be time to revisit that article and reflect on how the E-Scale itself may be changing.

If you are unfamiliar with the E-Scale, I encourage you to read my article from 2019.(1) And if you want to go straight to the source, read Winter’s original article as well.(2) Links to both are included at the end of this piece.

In that earlier article, I focused mostly on the left side of the scale, suggesting that efforts to invite non-Christians to attend church are no longer as effective as they once were. As Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian, the distance between E0 and E1 has grown. The non-believers who once visited our churches are, for the most part, no longer doing so.
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In this article, however, I want to look toward the other end of the scale, where I suspect the opposite may be happening. While the distance between E0 and E1 has grown, the distance between E2 and E3 may be shrinking as global culture becomes increasingly flattened.

As I wrote in another article:
Sixteen-year-olds in China and Mozambique, Canada and Mexico, the U.S. and Vietnam are watching the same TikToks, following the same Instagram influencers, and learning how to fix their iPhones from the same YouTube videos.

They share gaming advice on Discord and openly mock those of us who still use Facebook. They are poised to work together in business and service better than any generation in history.

Their embodied identities are still shaped by their local cultures, but their digital identities are flattening those distinctions as they interact online with people and content from across the world.”(3)
The barriers to cross-cultural ministry appear to be shrinking with each successive generation and each new leap in globalization and technological innovation. English is rapidly becoming the world’s lingua franca. Growing affluence means more people are traveling beyond their country of birth for both education and leisure. More than five billion people now own a smartphone—roughly 60 percent of the global population—and that number continues to grow.(4) Unsurprisingly, smartphone adoption is highest among younger generations.

None of this eliminates real cultural differences, of course but this flattening creates new opportunities for ordinary believers in local churches to participate in cross-cultural kingdom work in ways that were nearly unimaginable twenty years ago. Yet it also presents new challenges.

Many younger people seem increasingly drawn toward a soft universalism or a kind of build-your-own spirituality sometimes described as therapeutic deism. At the other extreme are those who find themselves pulled into ideological echo chambers, easily shaped by more radical ideologies.

Both realities create real challenges for Christians seeking to share the good news of the gospel. And both require the same dependence on prayer, Scripture, and spiritual discernment that cross-cultural witness has always required.
​
I am not suggesting that the E-Scale is obsolete. Far from it. But the cultural conditions surrounding it may be shifting. If the distance between cultures is flattening in new ways, it may be worth revisiting this familiar tool and asking how it might inform mission in an increasingly connected world.

​Thanks for reading!

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Published on
God is not surprised by global migration. Discover how Scripture reframes immigration as a providential missional moment.
By Aaron Myers
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A few years ago, I traveled to Kansas to lead a Strangers No More training for a youth group from a small rural town. We spent the day in Wichita — a few hours of cross-cultural training, visits to immigrant-owned grocery stores, lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant, some time at the local mosque. The students listened well. They asked questions. They began to see their state through a kingdom lens. It was, by any measure, a good day.

But the moment I remember most came on my drive back to South Dakota, at a gas station in McPherson, Kansas, a town of about 8,000. Inside, behind the counter, stood a man with olive skin and a heavy accent that suggested he wasn’t born in the U.S. I asked where he was from.

“India,” he said.

I asked, "So if you are from India, you speak both English and Hindi, but you also probably speak a third language as well, is that right?"

Surprised by my interest, he smiled and said, "Yes, I also speak Gujarati."

While he rang up the sale, I pulled out my phone and opened the Jesus Film app. On the map of India, more than 170 languages appeared. I tapped one that looked right and turned the screen toward him. “Is this it?” He nodded. Ten seconds later, the film began playing in Gujarati, a language spoken by nearly 62 million people. His face broke into a wide grin. He nodded again, slower this time. “Yes,” he said. “That is my language.”

Globalization is real. More than 300 million people today live outside the country of their birth, a population that, if gathered in one place, would rank among the largest nations on earth, representing nearly 4 percent of the world. Most have moved because the world is broken: war, economic collapse, famine, environmental disaster, violence. Christians rightly pray for justice and peace and work toward wise and compassionate policy. Nations have the responsibility to order their borders and laws.

But Christians must also ask a deeper question: What if God is at work in this movement?

In Athens, the Apostle Paul declared that God “made from one man every nation of mankind … having determined allotted times and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26–27). Migration does not catch heaven off guard. God is not wringing his hands, wondering what is going on. He is, as he has always been, on the move — and he invites his church to move with him.
In what follows, I want to explore four distinct but interwoven ways of thinking about the nations — particularly the nations now living among us:

  • An Eternal Reality
  • A Discipleship Possibility
  • A Biblical Responsibility
  • A Missional Opportunity

An Eternal Reality
Scripture leaves little ambiguity about God’s heart for the nations. From the promise to Abraham that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3), to the prophet Habakkuk’s vision that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14), the arc of the Bible bends toward a global chorus of worship. In Revelation, the Apostle John sees “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9). Heaven will be a multicultural, multi-linguistic declaration of the goodness and glory of God.

And this diversity is not incidental; it is revelatory. An Egyptian slave woman gives us one of Scripture’s most intimate names for God — El Roi, “the God who sees me” (Genesis 16:13). At Pentecost, when the Spirit descends on the waiting disciples, God does not default to Greek, the trade language of the empire. Instead, he speaks through “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia … Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome … Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:9–11). The miracle is not merely comprehension; it is particularity. God addresses people in the language of the heart.

The Somali shopkeeper downtown. The Latino roofer around the corner. The Indian doctor guiding your mother through a cancer diagnosis. They are not demographic trends. They are image-bearers. Some will be our eternal brothers and sisters. We will worship together. We will learn from one another. Each culture reflects a distinct facet of God’s character and creativity.

As debates about immigration swell across headlines and campaign platforms, Christians must remember this: the people being discussed are not abstractions. They are future worshipers. They are, perhaps, future friends. They are part of an eternal reality that stretches far beyond our present anxieties and into the unending, multilingual praise of God.

A Discipleship Possibility
What do a Ukrainian, a Congolese, a Bhutanese and an Oromo refugee have in common? Each is a friend who arrived in my city seeking refuge and each has deepened my faith in Christ. In a cultural moment when the church is increasingly sidelined in a post-Christian society, we have much to learn from brothers and sisters who have carried their faith across borders.

When I once asked my Ukrainian friend how he learned to endure persecution, he did not offer a theory but a memory: as a boy, he gathered with other believers nearly every night of the week for hours of prayer, worship and Scripture, meeting quietly and at cost. An Oromo pastor, frustrated with his congregation in the United States, stopped himself mid-complaint to apologize. Back home, he explained, believers would pray together through the night and he was discouraged that he could not persuade them to gather for more than four hours of prayer here.

My Bhutanese friend told me about the beatings he endured from his uncle in front of their entire village in a Nepali refugee camp after choosing to follow Christ. And a Congolese pastor, a survivor of genocide, once urged me to travel with him to Kenya to train fellow Congolese refugees living in the slums of Nairobi. His charge to them was unsparing: if they did not share the good news of Jesus with their Somali neighbors — also refugees — they would be complicit in spiritual genocide. It was a sobering exhortation, especially from a man who was a survivor of physical genocide.
In all of this, one truth has become increasingly clear: the Western church has much to learn about faithful presence on the margins. For many immigrant congregations, Christianity is not a cultural inheritance but a costly allegiance. They know what it means to worship without social capital, to gather without applause, to follow Christ without the reinforcement of the surrounding culture. In a society that is steadily shedding its Christian memory, they are not disoriented; they are prepared.

Perhaps, then, the immigrant church is not merely a community to be served but a community sent to disciple us, to teach us how to live again as “aliens and strangers,” to recover a winsome, resilient faith, and to shine with quiet confidence in a darkening age.

A Biblical Responsibility
Scripture leaves little ambiguity about God’s concern for the vulnerable — the widow, the orphan, the poor and the foreigner. Nations will craft their own immigration laws. In a democratic society, Christians will disagree about border security, asylum policy and the enforcement of statutes. Faithful believers, seeking to vote their conscience, will arrive at different prudential conclusions in a pluralistic public square.

But while policy may be complex, the posture of the heart is not.

God speaks with striking clarity about his regard for the foreigner. Again and again, Israel is commanded not merely to tolerate the stranger but to love him. In Leviticus, the instruction is unmistakable: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God "(Leviticus 19:33-34).

Similar commands echo throughout the Old Testament more than 30 times and their logic is simple: you were foreigners in Egypt. Israel’s own story of displacement was meant to shape its moral imagination. Their collective memory was to form their compassionate mercy. Having known vulnerability, they were not to exploit it in others.

From Genesis to the Prophets, God reveals a particular concern for the immigrant and the refugee, for those navigating life without power, familiarity or protection. That concern does not dissolve in the New Testament; it deepens.

For Christians, then, the question is not merely political but spiritual. Are our instincts aligned with the heart of the Father? This does not preclude serious debate about immigration policy or national responsibility. Democracies require such debate. But whatever conclusions we reach, certain boundaries must remain firm. We cannot traffic in demeaning rhetoric. We cannot tolerate the casual belittling of image-bearers, regardless of their legal status.

And when immigrants are treated with contempt or violence, silence is not neutrality; it is surrender. The church is called to be a prophetic  witness, to speak with conviction and with compassion. If we abandon that calling here, we risk forfeiting our moral clarity everywhere.

Missional Opportunity
From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible unfolds as a story of mission. The Great Commission in Matthew 28 stands near its climax, but the arc begins much earlier. Humanity’s first calling was expansive: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). The prophets widened the horizon further. Isaiah envisions a servant who will not only restore Israel but become “a light for the Gentiles … that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). Even the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar, chastened by what he witnessed, acknowledged a God whose power extended beyond borders and languages (Daniel 3:29).

Theologian Christopher J. H. Wright captures this thread succinctly: “It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world.” In other words, mission is not a program of the church; it is the reason for its existence.

If, as Acts 17 suggests, God “marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands,” then migration is not merely a geopolitical phenomenon. It may also be a providential one. The arrival of immigrant communities, including those with little exposure to Christianity, can be seen not only as a policy question but as a missional moment.

Today, by some counts, more than 7,000 people groups remain “unreached”—that is, without a self-sustaining community of believers able to share the faith within their own culture. While most of these groups are concentrated in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, representatives of hundreds now live in Western cities. They are neighbors and colleagues, classmates and researchers, service workers and entrepreneurs powering places like Silicon Valley.

If God’s purpose is that people “from every nation, tribe, people and language” would know him, and if the nations are now present in our own communities, then the question is no longer whether mission matters. It is how we will respond. The opportunity before the church is both practical and profound: to learn, to welcome, and to bear witness, to invite new neighbors not only into our homes, but into the life of Christ.

Conclusion
I began this article with the story of a Gujarati shopkeeper in a small town in central Kansas. The Gujarati people are mostly found in India, where their population numbers over 61 million. According to Joshua Project, more than 600,000 live in the United States. The sad reality is that less than 1 percent of the Gujarati people are Christians. That day, the man behind the counter was hearing his native language for the first time in a film about Jesus. Few resources exist in Gujarati, and for him, even this small encounter was remarkable.

Then he asked me a simple question: “Are you a Christian?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am a follower of Jesus.”

He smiled, reached beneath the counter, and pulled out a magazine. “Another Christian was here a few days ago and gave me this,” he said, holding up a pamphlet — a tract from the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The world’s unreached peoples are here, arriving in our cities and towns — our Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. They are seeking friendship and hope. And if we do not reach them, someone else will. Perhaps it will be the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons, the radical atheist or the New Age spiritualist, the casual hedonist or the relentless allure of the American dream. Satan is cunning, strategic, and relentless; he will do whatever he can to keep these hearts from hearing the truth of Christ and to distract us from God’s mission.

But one thing remains true: the Kingdom of God is not in trouble.

The God of the universe is not pacing the heavens, wondering what to do with Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists. He is at work, bringing them, and their stories, their hopes, their questions, to our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our streets.
The pressing question is not whether God will act. He already is.

​The question we must wrestle with is this: How will we respond?

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